Julio Oscar Mechoso, Miami-born character actor, dies at 62

Julio Oscar Mechoso, whose prize-winning Coral Gables High recitation of a snarling monologue from the film "Patton" presaged a long and successful Hollywood career playing gangsters, brutal cops and even demons, died of a heart attack Saturday at age 62.

Mechoso got his first TV role not long after graduating from FIU, on the Miami-made sitcom “¿Qué pasa, U.S.A.?” and would eventually appear in dozens of films and TV shows, from “Miami Vice” to “Seinfeld” to “Cane.”

Possessed of a Medusa-like scowl and an intensity so fierce that he often bust into tears during table reads of scripts — friends teased him with the nickname lloracito, the little one who cries — Mechoso was stereotyped early in his career as a tough-guy character actor.